Sports good place to pick up life skills

Mon., Sept. 20, 2004

Family notes Mary Beth Donelan

SCHOOL HAS BEGUN and now is a perfect time for parents to encourage their children to get involved in sports and physical fitness.

Whether it’s track and field, tennis or any other activity, children who play sports tend to be positive about themselves and their bodies, willing to set goals and accustomed to doing what it takes to achieve them. The skills they learn – leadership, teamwork, setting goals – will last a lifetime whether they become pro athletes, scientists, business executives, parents or community leaders. Here are some ideas to get started:

Try lots of sports. Each one is different and each demands different skills. Sample them all; there’s sure to be one that your child loves and that really suits them.

Go to some games. Go to local school, college or pro games. Get there early and talk with some players about why they love the sport.

Team up with a friend. Learning something new can be more fun and a lot less intimidating with a friend by your side, so sign up together.

Time to get energized

Attention teachers and students: Have you ever needed to open your classroom windows on a cold winter’s day to beat the classroom heat? Are lights left on in your school cafeteria long after lunch hour is over? Are people in your school constantly forgetting to turn off computers? If any of these scenarios sound familiar to you, get your class ready for the HOBO Energy Challenge, an exciting new contest program for K-12 teachers and students sponsored by iScienceProject.

The free contest, which runs through May 1, is designed to promote energy awareness within schools while offering students of all ages a fun, hands-on science learning experience with HOBO® data loggers. A data logger is a simple-to-use portable electronic recording device that can be set up in minutes to monitor light usage, room temperature and relative humidity. Accompanying software turns the energy usage data into colorful, time-stamped graphs that indicate, for example, when lights were on or off and what room temperatures were during the night.

The mission of the contest is simple: Use data loggers to find examples of energy waste in your school. Participating classrooms will receive a free HOBO Loaner Package that includes everything needed to start investigating energy usage: a HOBO data logger, software, and energy-saving contest activities.

Classrooms that investigate and document at least one example of energy waste win a complete HOBO data logger system ($200 value). An entire classroom set of HOBO data loggers ($1000 value) will be awarded to elementary, middle and high-school classrooms that make the greatest effort to investigate energy waste.

Deadline for contest entries is April 30, 2005.For more information on the HOBO Energy Challenge, or to sign up, visit http://www.iscienceproject.com/ energy_challenge/energy_challenge .html.

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